PSA: Doing Your Resume

I'd add to this, after going through a few hundred applications from 1Ls for a judicial internship/externship this summer.

The most important rule is that there are no blanket rules, because everyone making a hiring decision is going to have a different set of criteria.

As a demonstration, here are some of OP's points that I come out the opposite end for:

do not include your weight training (or whatever) on your resume.

I like personal interests. If I'm calling you for an interview, you've already demonstrated some reason to believe in your ability to perform legal research and writing. We want an interview because we want to see if you're likeable and fun. I will have a conversation with you about olympic lifting (or golf or cooking Spanish food or computer programming or singing or painting) if that's your thing. I'm not going to spend my summer with boring people if I can help it.

If I don't ask for a transcript, don't give me one.

I don't care. I will look at transcripts if they're included, and people who are in the top of their law school class (especially in LRW) give me some kind of reassurance that at least someone out there liked the applicant's work. But we don't ask for them because we don't care enough about 1L grades.

And then there's this:

So maybe send it as a pdf if you don't want to learn word?

I'm even more of a stickler than OP. I can tell when you built a PDF from a manually formatted Word document, and I think that's a bad sign, too. Just learn how to use Word to properly - use indents, tab stops, spacing between paragraphs, styles, etc. And if you're sending me a resume, I personally like seeing one that was built in InDesign rather than Word, but that is not common at all.

The list goes on and on. Some people like fancy paper, while others don't care (and almost all of us prefer electronic format anyway). Some really care about fashion/style/attire choices for the interview, but some don't. Even the substantive preferences vary: Do we like prior work experience? Local ties? How important is class rank? School reputation? Undergrad reputation and class rank? Demonstrated ability to overcome hardships?

/r/LawSchool Thread